Sleepless
by Inusagi
Summary: After Lisa dies, Ianto can't sleep. Day 27 of the July TW Oneshot challenge (Posted late).


Disclaimer: I don't own Torchwood or related media.

*.*.*

I can't sleep.

It's all I want to do, just go to sleep and never wake up, but I can't shut my mind off.

She's dead.

_Really_ dead.

Before…before she was dead, but still alive. She was in there, somewhere. I'm sure of it. If I…if I'd been better, smarter, more resourceful, I could have saved her. I could have helped her overcome the…cybermind.

Then she was dead…but alive. In the pizza girl. Annie. But Lisa…she was in there. _Somewhere_. She spoke to me. She talked about camping…God, I hate camping, but Lisa loved it. She talked about camping and that fucking dog, while I pointed a gun at her and she stood there, dripping blood from the gashes in her head, like some grotesquely pretty version Frankenstein's monster.

They'd killed her. They'd stood there, like a slap-dash firing squad. And they'd killed her.

I wanted to be angry. I wanted to rage and hate and destroy, but I couldn't do that any more than I could fall asleep.

They were right to do what they'd done.

It wasn't Lisa.

She was…I swear she was in there somewhere. The whole time. But the part of her that survived was so small compared to the part of her that was taken by the machines.

My Lisa wouldn't have…she couldn't kill. She'd cried when a mouse had gotten trapped down the hall from our flat. I'd had to take it to the damn veterinarian, who thought I was mad, but put a little splint on its broken forepaw anyway.

A girl who cried over household pests could never be capable of taking two human lives and attempting to take more.

My Lisa…she wouldn't have wanted to upgrade me. She wouldn't have wanted to upgrade anyone.

I just…

I just wanted to sleep.

I just wanted the chance to see her in my dreams.

If I could, I'd join her, but Jack—bastard, murderous Jack—was camped out on my sofa, flipping through channels on the telly. He had all my medications, all my sharp objects.

I hadn't even thought about it until he'd gathered all that rubbish up. Even after that, for a little while.

Then it occurred to me how few people would remember her. Nearly all of our coworkers—all of hers, actually. That floor had been wiped out.—were dead. Her parents had passed on long before I'd met her. And all our friends were coworkers.

Jack and the others, they'd never be able to think of her as anything other than a metal monster.

And…I was afraid that, after caring for her in that unit for so long, after seeing her on a rampage, after seeing her broken, bloody body on the basement floor, that I'd never be able to remember her as she was.

In that moment of sickening realization, I wanted nothing more than to die, just for the chance of seeing her again, whole and happy.

But.

But then there would be no one left that remembered her.

I scared the bejeesus out of Jack when I started shuffling through boxes behind him. I wasn't trying to sneak up, but I must have. It didn't take long to find what I was looking for—even rushed, I'm an organized packer—and I popped a disc into the DVD player.

"What-?"

"Just watch," I said. If he was going to be here, he was going to have to deal.

One of our mates, Terry, who worked on the 4th floor, had a thing about video cameras. He recorded everything outside of work. I think it was about being afraid of Retcon, but I was in no position to judge. But on Lisa's 28th birthday, we had a dinner party. All of our friends—including Terry and his camera—were there. He'd given me this DVD three weeks before the…before what happened, happened.

And there she was, right on the screen. She was wearing a new top—it was white and lace and I'd hated it because it was scratchy every time I touched her. But she was right, as usual, about how it looked against her skin. So beautiful.

She was laughing. I wasn't paying attention to the others and I don't remember. There's so much that I don't remember. It had been so long. Her sobs and shouts of pain were still fresh in my ears from these last weeks of hell, and they probably always would be, but I'd forgotten what her laugh sounded like.

"She was pretty," Jack commented, his voice more tender than I'd ever heard it.

"Yes," I said, choking back tears. "She was beautiful."

*.*.*

A/N: The word was "sleepless." And I've made myself sad now. Thanks for reading.


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